ALBUM RECOMMENDATIONS |

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The old five-point scale has been retired in favor of just rating stuff 1-10, which allows me a much more nuanced final rating. Still don't take it that seriously. Most of these come from my own collection, so the grades skew rather high. Your results may vary if you send me stuff to review.

Each album is given three Essential tracks, my personal favorites, regardless of how weird and inconsequential they are. The Quintessential pick is the one I think best represents the album as a whole, so you can try one song instead of a whole album of songs. Non-Essential picks range from merely disappointing to outright unlistenable.

Ramones

[#] Mania (1988)

Reviewed August 2, 2021

A 74-minute assfucking.

(This is an album that was previously covered on the Rediscovering! Click the link in the table to read a wordier and possibly less accurate version of my feelings on this album.)

Single-artist compilations and greatest hits albums tend not to be in my wheelhouse, but that didn't matter any during the Rediscovering. Mania styles itself as a 74-minute Ramones cheese platter, using every minute of that to sample out their first ten records from 1976 to 1987 and add in some single-only tracks for flavor. As a compilation, it's well done, and as a band, they sure are fast and tight--but let's be real, do the Ramones really have 74 minutes of music in them? This is an overwhelming set taken in one go, and if you stop halfway through, you might just return to find the back half noticeably spottier than the front half.

On the good end of things, the classic Ramones records, even chopped up, are still the bouncy, angular, cartoonishly violent sonic rollercoaster they always were. "Cretin Hop", "Beat on the Brat", "Rockaway Beach", "Teenage Lobotomy", yes, "Sedated" and "Blitzkrieg"--it's all still a damn good time in short bursts. Its their 80s period, songs like "Somebody Put Something in My Drink", where the Ramones try to sound street-illegal, their tempos slowed, their refrains repetitive, and their lyrics nauseatingly much clearer, that are the biggest and least impressive slog, and unfortunately, that's half the album. Mania serves one and only one really good purpose--to get you to buy the first few Ramones albums in full, and you might already have those anyway.